Xuanhuaceratops

• China

• X. niei Zhao et al., 2006

Xuanhuaceratops is a little known genus of bird Beck dinosaur ( Ornithischia ) from the group of ceratopsians. He is one of the urtümlicheren representatives of this group.

So far from Xuanhuaceratops only parts of the skull, individual vertebrae, parts of the basin and isolated limb bones known. He is likely to have greatly resembled the closely related Chaoyangsaurus, differences in the construction of the Quadratums, the scapula and the fact that he had only one tooth in the premaxillary bone ( premaxilla ). Xuanhuaceratops was a small, possibly bipeder ( locomotive on two legs ) dinosaurs, like all ceratopsians, he was herbivorous.

The fossil remains of this dinosaur were found in the Houcheng formation in the Chinese province of Hebei. The genus has long been not described and was known under the name Xuanhuasaurus, but is now regarded as a nomen nudum invalid.

The formal first description was only by Zhao, Cheng, Xu and Makovicky in 2006. The genus name is derived from the locality Xuanhua ( the city of Zhangjiakou belonging ) and the Greek ceratops ( = " horn face" ), a common name component of the ceratopsians. Type species is X. niei. The finds are dated to the late Jurassic ( Tithonian ) to an age of about 152-145 million years.

Xuanhuaceratops is classified together with the also long time did not formally described Chaoyangsaurus in the Chaoyangsauridae family who are counted among the representatives of the basal ceratopsian. The exact systematic position within this dinosaur group is controversial. The describer of Xuanhuaceratops see this and Chaoyangsaurus as primitive as the Psittacosauridae. You & Dodson (2004 ), however, arrange Chaoyangsaurus as basalsten representatives of Neoceratopsia and thus developed higher than the Psittacosauridae one.